realfake

AAOSS: Receptive Ears (pt.2)

2010-08-11T23:52:00.001-07:00

But a story from An Anthology of Short Stories

See Last (Receptive Ears pt. 1) <> See Next ()

***

“We can go to my place, it’s not too far.”

I was cold again. The heated cab that had taken us to the nightclub had accustomed us to the feeling of warmth; it had given a false sense of security- the same security that came in knowing you were about to arrive somewhere safe and warm. But that security had been lost when we realized we couldn’t afford the fifteen dollar cover charge that the nightclub sought in exchange for its indoor heating. The man the woman had been with was gone; a passerby, flitting in and then out of our lives; a flat character that held no importance. The woman had only met him earlier that night herself. When we arrived at the nightclub, he went in, saying he was going to find someone he knew; someone who could help us get in. He never returned.

We had no choice but to follow the woman; it was either be led by her, or wander the streets until the sun rose and the public transport ran again. Before leaving, we stopped first to chat with the ecstasy dealers at the side of the building. How’s it going? It’s cold out, hey? Too bad we can’t find anything to keep us warm in these hours of darkness. We shook hands with the dealers and left; headed towards wherever it was the woman we were with kept her indoor heating. We walked the empty streets, the unfilled solitude broken only by occasional encounters with other denizens of the night.

One man stopped us, declaring he was from out of town. He was lost, so would we mind if he followed us from afar? He assured us he had no interest in where we were going, as long as we could lead him to somewhere recognizable. He had nowhere to sleep; we pointed to a parking garage and told him that he could sleep there. He stumbled off in the direction we had indicated; he seemed to believe our directions held answers for him, and we weren’t about to correct him.

We entered the woman’s house accompanied by foreboding feelings of entrapment; a child’s playthings littered the pile rug of the living room floor. We were told to take a seat while the woman made us tea in the kitchen; we hadn’t even realized we wanted tea, but we must have; it was her first act upon entering the house, and to her, the act of making tea seemed primary above all else.

She entered the room, cups of tea in hand. She placed hers on the table, presented us with ours, and returned to the kitchen. Upon losing sight of her, I took her cup and poured some of my tea into hers; then, some of her tea into mine. I repeated this process, hands shaking, until the two cups were equally dilute.

“Hey man, fuck you.” I couldn’t help but smile. Oscar had probably been thinking the same as I had been, and my actions merely solidified his justifiable paranoia. Who were we to trust this random?

Perhaps my roommate resented my actions because they put thoughts in his head that he didn’t particularly want sitting in the back of his brain- thoughts always ready for thoughts more sinister to cling to and build upon. Perhaps though, he merely resented the fact that his cup of tea was still running strong at one hundred percent concentrate.

I don’t know which, if either, was the reason he cursed at me; I didn’t ask. I didn’t have the time to ask; the woman had entered the room again, missing by mere seconds my impromptu chemistry experiment, and cutting our conversation off before it had begun.

“How’s the tea?” She asked.

“We haven’t had any yet, we were waiting for you.”

“Oh you didn’t need to do that.” She giggled. “Drink up.” I cast a look at Oscar and, not knowing if this would be the last drink I ever drank, sipped the concoction. It tasted like goji berries. I shrugged.

“It tastes good.”

“Good, I’m glad.” She knelt on the floor, in front of the television set. Though she was ten years our elder, she looked like a child sitting on the floor, legs crossed. She chose some music; music I had never heard before; music that in other situations I may have enjoyed. Here though, it merely compounded the eeriness of the situation. She draped a blanket over the television, explaining that when she listened to music, the ambient light from the screen gave her headaches. Plus, it tended to ruin the atmosphere.

Why does she want an atmosphere? What are her intentions?

I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and texted my friend, who was likely blissfully asleep in some bed at the university residence. Wow this chick is fucked. No reply. Seriously, if we don’t show up, here’s the address. I sent her the address we were at. No reply. It’s been nice knowing you, in case I never see you again. Blissfully asleep.

Maybe she would read my texts in the morning with sinking feelings of worry; it would be a sweet and subtle vengeance put upon her, in return for her eagerness to leave me earlier in the night and head to bed. Hopefully though, she would read the messages of distress before the morning came, and send help to the address I had sent her.

I put my phone away as the woman began to speak. She told us about herself, about her life, and about her child. At times, as her speech progressed, her soft voice shook, muted through unseen tears. I knew then that the words flowing from her mouth found their origins in her heart; her soul. She had been waiting a long time for the two young men in her living room to appear in her life. She had been waiting for a set of receptive ears that her story could fall upon.

I don’t know how long she had waited for us, but I do know that by hearing her story, we gave it a sense of importance; we validated who she was, justified her life, and substantiated her existence. I sat, absorbed by the pure emotion that lay within her words, and listened.

The details she shared are lost to me now, but the empathy I felt will follow me always.

She asked me if I wanted to see pictures of her giving birth. The disgust I felt was overpowered by the knowledge that she genuinely felt it was something I would want to see; to her those pictures must have been of utmost importance. I politely declined the invitation and looked over to Oscar for the first time since she had begun to speak. He was asleep, slumped on the couch. The sun was slowly rising on the horizon, gradually illuminating the frostbitten window behind him. We had been up all night, but I personally was wide awake. I knew I wouldn’t sleep until the new day had ended. The tea my roommate drank must have been good: it put him asleep, against all odds.

We sat there; her on the floor, and I on the couch. She asked me to give her a massage. I recognized the slippery slope that such physical contact could entail, but I did it anyway. She seemed so lonely; she craved the touch of another human being. And I wouldn’t have minded it either.

My roommate awoke groggily and went to the bathroom. She took the opportunity and kissed me, whispering in my ear the question I had been expecting, but not wanting to hear. I knew it couldn’t, shouldn’t happen. I told her no, and I could see the desperation set in upon her face. As my roommate returned, she stood up far too fast; her face was flushed. She excused herself and went to the kitchen to make herself more tea.

“I swear that chick drugged me man.”

“What gives you that idea?”

“I was wired before I fell asleep. And I fell asleep right after I drank that tea...”

“You’re paranoid man.” I couldn’t help but grin. “You think this chick drugged you?” He stared at me: his eyes said hey man, you know exactly what I’m talking about; but his mouth said nothing. He dared not express his concerns any further, for fear of sounding paranoid. Maybe my chemistry experiment earlier had no meaning; he didn’t know for sure what I was thinking at the time…

…maybe the feelings of entrapment he had been feeling since our arrival were purely in his head, and his head alone…

He laid down on the couch in an attempt to sober himself. This time, he didn’t sleep.

We both sat in the living room; we were tired, but our hearts were racing. We felt relaxed, but anxious. It was as if we were waiting for something; something great, something exciting; some climax to the night.

We have no idea what we’re waiting for.

As we sat, our minds focused on the only thing happening in the room: the music that had been playing since our arrival. The tempo seemed to increase; the volume swelled until all there was, was the music: primitive war chants from Brazil, ringing through the house.

…the notes were flowing from the speakers in waves, rebounding off of every surface and orifice in the room, all waves augmenting each other, meeting each other upon arrival at our ear drums…

“Turn it off man. Turn it off!” The overpowering presence of the sound had gotten to Oscar, instilling a primitive, inexplicable, and irrational fear within him. I turned the music down, and Oscar went outside to sit on the step and gather himself.

Hearing the music turn down, the woman entered the room. She sat down next to me and asked me to kiss her again. I did, for the last time. The desperation was still within her. She begged me to stay: she was waiting for the night to climax, just as we were. But I knew from experience the night never climaxes. I explained to her that when we were gone, so too would be this night. Soon, all the feelings she was feeling right then and there would seem as foolish modicums of the past.

Perhaps she knew I was right, but I knew she didn’t want to believe it. She pushed the knowledge from her mind; she was willing to live in the moment and to let her future self deal with whatever consequences arose from that. I did her the favour of walking to the door, giving one last heartfelt goodbye. The disappointment emanated from her, and the empathy I felt crushed me. I had been there, on countless couches like the one she was sitting on, feeling the same feelings of desperation she was.

“Goodbye.” She whispered sadly, her muted voice sinking through unseen tears.

“I’ll call you.” I promised.

As we walked away from the house, our bodies cutting through the crisp air of the morning, the sun shone down upon us, warming us, dispelling the cold that belonged to the eve before. We walked in silence, each lost in thought. The colors of the world have never seemed more vivid.

I felt my cell phone vibrate in my pocket, at my side. I slid it open; my friend had awoken, likely in some bed at the university, and had read my messages:

Are you okay?

I’m perfect.

AAOSS: Receptive Ears (pt.1)

2010-08-11T23:48:00.000-07:00

But a story from An Anthology of Short Stories

See Last (The End pt. 2) <> See Next (Receptive Ears pt. 2)

***

I walked past the library the other day. The majestic architecture that had been designed to house some of the most important discoveries humanity has ever made, rose, above my head, into the clouded sky: a temple to the gods with two legs. The reverence one might once have felt was lost to the greyness of the day; the blackness of the time. The windows, once used to illuminate the words of man, were smudged to obscurity with black soot: the accumulation of thousands of fingers being smeared across the glass, left unwashed; unmaintained. The library is still open, but for the most part, it goes unused. The worn patterned bricks of the courtyard, the eroded steps that lie at the end of it; these are the attractions that draw the thousands of fingers belonging to the smudges that lie upon the glass. The drug dealers use this area with impunity. They sit on those steps every day and watch the addicts as they approach through the courtyard, sticking close to the shadows of the wall, scurrying away when they have found what they came for.

I boarded a bus and sat in silence. There was once a time when one would sit and listen to the chatter of their fellow commuters, speaking too loudly on cell phones. The babble of a dozen conversations droning in the background, creating an ambience that I once found to be all so annoying, would be a welcome gift over the depressed silence that permutated this hollow bus. So many people, so close to each other, and not one of them communicating.

We drove past the local Stage 4 recruitment office: a dilapidated advancement in architecture; a form that long ago lost its poignancy. Once, a beacon of hope and excitement; a symbol of change and prosperity, the building now stands as a testament to the vulnerability of human dreams. Stage 4 had been the mode through which our parents were to build their new reality. At its conception, it was derided as an idealistic utopian vision: a literal restructuring of society rooted in equality, safety and convenience. When the vision proliferated, gaining footing in the collective conscious, the grandiose cities that were to be built reminded everyone of the poignancy of the inert power of change that humanity holds within itself. Our parents poured their hopes into the vision; it was through Stage 4 that their revolution was to manifest. Without violence or physical aggression, they were going to change government. It was ingenious: the current government was too heavily invested in itself to change, so rather than change the government that currently existed, why not create a new government and change your allegiance?

The vision initially held no substance; the resources for building a new society simply were impossible to afford in a monetary system. This, compounded by heavy government opposition and defamation, proved initially as an impossibly high hurdle in the path to change. This changed with corporate backing. The government held sway to the financial power of the corporation.

All it took was a company with power; a company with the intelligence to realize the potential that lay within being solely responsible for the creation of a new, functional society; a company with the urge to be the sole player in a monopoly.

Legally, our parents won the right to form their own society because it was their right. The battle was long and arduous; a sinkhole of legal fees that achieved unprecedented media coverage, and ended as a massive class action suit with intense corporate fiscal power. In the end, the government would concede because they had no other choice: at its root, the role of government is to protect the interests of the people. Any government that has not existed for all of time is a government created from change. At some point, it didn’t exist: it was created. It is our infallible right: the proles must always be allowed to choose their government, even if it means creating their own.

I met with my roommate. He was getting off work; I had had the day off. We walked to the university to meet some friends from out of town. They were staying with another friend at the university residence. We all had attended high school together, but since had gone our separate ways. Meeting with our old friends was like meeting someone who you had heard about, but had never known. My roommate and I knew their stories better than most, but we had become too far removed by time to know each other. What we had done since we had graduated had sent us on separate paths; paths too far removed from each other to be completely reconciled.

We went to the bar; dance music blasted. Problems arose at the coat check: I was wearing a sweater under my hoodie, and was told rudely by the two underdressed ditzes working behind the counter I would have to pay for both. I asked if they couldn’t simply put them both on the same hanger. They told me no; I had two sweaters, and had to pay for both. So I borrowed the extra money from one of my friends and begrudgingly paid the extra fee. The ditzes asked if it would be alright if they put them on the same hanger; to save space, you see. I walked away, casting them the dirtiest look I could muster. I hate those bars, I really do.

We filed into the bar from the coat check. My roommate and I followed our friends, but were stopped by the bouncer, who pointed to a set of stairs at the right.

“You go up.” He informed us elegantly. My roommate asked why.

“Ladies night. Guys can’t watch. Wait until it’s done. You go up.” Great. Our old friends had brought us to a bar with male strippers. We climbed the stairs. I looked around to see if there were any vines for us monkeys to swing on. None. That’s a shame; I would have felt more at home if they had attempted to simulate my natural habitat.

We ordered a drink and walked around the upper balcony; sauntered crude circles, following the lead of our slouched brethren. We were all waiting; waiting for the ladies down below to have their fill, so we could swing in on our vines and enjoy the aftermath that the male strippers had left for us.

As the live pornography wrapped up, the dance floor began to fill. It’s a shame I don’t dance; well, at least not most of the time. Sometimes, when Mars and Venus have aligned in just the right manner, and I have consumed just the right cocktail of happiness, I dance.

No, not dance; flow. I flow to the music; to life; to the world and people around me. I don’t move to the rhythm, I am the rhythm; when the conditions are just right, I can find complete nirvana. But this night was not such a night. This night, sucked.

I circled the perimeter of the dance floor, drink in hand, watching the girls I came with dance. My roommate was off, out and about; likely circling the dance floor on the opposite side of the room to me; circling the same circle I had been, always at the opposite apex, so that we never met. It would have been easy to see him if it wasn’t for the dense fog shooting out of the fog machines, or for the multitudes of people that speckled that fog. The scene was an image from primordial earth; darkened shadows of young men and women, swaying in stupor; clouded by dense, humid air.

“Where’s Oscar?”

I flashed in to the present. How much time had passed since my last lucid moment? I knew then that I had drunk too much.

“What?” I asked in confusion.

“Where’s Oscar?” My friend asked again. Probably across the dance floor from us, at the opposite apex of this circle. But I dared not admit the futility of my night; not to her; not after I had watched her dance the night away; not after I had watched her actually enjoy herself.

“I’m not too sure.” I answered instead.

“Well you should find him. The bar is closing.” I looked around. The room was indeed much emptier; the dance floor barren. I set off to look for him; circling one last circle. Nothing. Why was it my responsibility to find my roommate? Giving up, I walked towards the entrance. He must have left with some girl he met. Then I saw my friends waiting at the door, Oscar beside them.

“Hurry up!” My friend from high school shouted. “Where have you been anyway?” Ummm...

I walked to the door, following them out. I noticed the bouncer watching me, staring at my hand. I glanced down and noticed I was still carrying my drink. As I sprinted out to catch up to my friends, I dropped the bottle on the counter. In my haste it missed, shattering on the floor. I stared at the bouncer, aghast. I did not have the time to deal with an angry bouncer.

“It’s okay.” He nodded towards me. “I know it was an accident.” Wow. I thought to myself. The first person I meet in this bar who I like, and it’s a bouncer. Speaks a lot for the bar. Speaks more for the people in it.

I nearly left without my sweaters: all two of them. I looked in my wallet; fumbled around; realized my stub was either lost, or, more likely, that I was far too drunk to find it. This did not bode well for my sweaters.

“Ummm... I lost my ticket, and you have my...” I mumbled to the ditzes behind the counter, knowing full well the futility of the query I was about to put forth.

“You lost your stub? Well how can we get your sweaters if you don’t have your stub?” I leaned over, peering at the ten or so jackets left amid the field of empty hangers.

“They’re right there.” I pointed.

“Yea.” One ditz smirked.

“But how do we know that they’re your sweaters.” The other finished. I glared at them, hatred welling up. I really do hate those bars, I honestly do.

“Okay fine. I’m tired and I have to go home and cheat on my boyfriend. You’re lucky.” (hey, it’s my story). The ditz reached behind her and grabbed my sweaters.

“Thanks!” I smiled. “You have been ever so helpful.” I walked away happy, knowing full well that someday at least one of those girls was going to fall down a well, or do something equally stupid that would spell their own demise. Darwinism doesn’t fail.

We piled into a cab and directed the cabbie towards eighty second avenue; this party wasn’t over. We had drunk at the girls’ bar all night, and now Oscar and I wanted to show them what it was really like to party. Eighty second was the city’s party scene; nearly every business was a bar. If it wasn’t a bar, it was a restaurant, music, art, or book store. We arrived to find the street nearly empty.

“Where are we going?” One of the girls asked, shivering from the cold.

“You will see.” Was our reply. Shit. Where were we going? I couldn’t remember. I looked to Oscar for answers, but he was in the same position as me.

The realization slowly crept upon me that we had intended to take them to one of the small bars that we usually frequented, one that usually had intimate, live music. But we screwed up. I had indiscreetly looked at the time several minutes before: it was three in the morning. The bars were long since closed. And now we were here, with our friends from out of town; friends who were following us, expecting a warm place to go. And every dam bar was closed.

“Hey can I bum a smoke from you?” I turned, expecting to see yet another homeless urchin salivating over the package of cigarettes I knew I had in my back pocket. How did they always know I smoked?

“Sorry man. It’s my last one. It’s too late to buy more. I’ve already given out like six smokes tonight. You wouldn’t like the brand I smoke. Smoking gives you cancer you know...” I listed off the string of lies and excuses I always kept prepared; listed them off as I had done countless times before. Then, I caught her face. The man and woman who had approached were filth free, and likely had a warm home to go to.

“Hey that’s cool. Where are you guys all partying at tonight?” She smiled. Some back alley, by the looks of it. She asked us if we wanted to split a cab; head over to a nightclub whose doors close at four in the morning, only serves bottles of water to its patrons, and always has an abundance of wide-eyed ecstasy dealers pushing their wares at the side of the building. But they also probably had indoor heating. Oscar and I turned to our friends.

“Wanna go with them?” I asked.

“No. We’re tired and cold, so we’re walking back to the university.” And that was that. I knew then and there that nothing could be said to the girls to change their minds. Nothing I ever said to them could change their minds.

“Well we’re going with them.”

“Okay. See you.” As they turned and walked away, all that had happened earlier vanished, becoming yet another page in the story of my life: The underdressed ditzes guarding the gates of hell, welcoming all newcomers, always with genuine concern in their voices, warning that should you enter, you may find it a little warm, so leave your jackets- that will save you from Beelzebub’s anguish. I, a monkey on a vine, swinging from the upper canopy, down, to the eternal maze of primordial images below: doomed to saunter endless circles; lost among misshapen figures; always an outcast wondering what exactly he was doing there. Even the silent taxi ride, an eventless void in the night; a dream that didn’t quite seem to exist, except that it had to have: we would not have been where we were, in that place and time; on that street at three in the morning, if the cab ride had not occurred. All events of the early eve gave way to the next page of the night.

AAOSS: The End (pt.2)

2010-07-14T14:29:00.000-07:00

But a story from An Anthology of Short Stories

See Last (The End pt. 1) < See Next (Receptive Ears pt.1)

***

The explosive force of the drug scene that arose in the nineteen sixties was the vessel through which the void, this vacuum of disbelief, could be explored. It was the tool they utilized to gain a deeper cognitive understanding of the metaphysical world. They had their religions; they had their beliefs, but many rejected these religions; formed their own beliefs. They based their understanding on the perception shattering powers that surged through the psychedelic scene.

By the time my generation was ready to see the world, drugs had already been imbedded in society by two entire generations prior to us. Though still illegal, they were so common any child above the age of ten could tell you what an amphetamine was. Now, I walk through the streets, see a man, sitting on the steps of the library, stuck in the midst of a world projected through the smoke of crack cocaine, and I see the boy I used to make collages with in elementary school. I walk past the nightclub, am confronted by a woman living in complete ecstasy, and I see the saddened girl I sat next to in high school English class. I walk through the river valley, and there, lying in a bed of cardboard and dirt, I see my first girlfriend; my first love. We are all children. We are all lost. And we have no one to help us.

***

We know we will fail as a society. Our parents attempted to build a society based on disbelief, and the disparity that arose destroyed it in a frenzied storm. We have divided ourselves from each other, each of us building a wall of scepticism around ourselves; fortifying the individual cells we live in. We have incredible technologies that we say allow us to communicate from and to anywhere, anytime, in the most powerful and expedient of ways. But how can we talk to each other; how can we call it communication, when we can’t even understand each other? Isn’t mutual understanding of what is being discussed a prerequisite to communication?

When there is no common reality; no banner to rally under, how can we understand each other? How can we have empathy for someone else’s situation, when we can’t even understand what their situation is? In order to understand, we must be able to place ourselves in their mindset; to put ourselves in their proverbial shoes. In order to do this, we must have some understanding of their beliefs. And when we hold no belief...

I don’t know when everyone realized we were lost. Individually, the realization came independently and gradually, but as a whole, it is as if society awoke one day and found everything they had known was gone. All anyone can say is that it is like it is now, and that at some time in the past, it was different. At what point it all changed, no one knows. Perhaps it would be easier if there was some way to define the world as it exists now; a way to know our reality. We have an idea of what it used to be like, but the evidence is anecdotal in nature.

We don’t know where we are, and we can’t trust where we came from.

AAOSS: The End (pt.1)

2010-07-04T16:44:00.000-07:00

But a story from An Anthology of Short Stories

See Last (Ozymandias) <> See Next (The End pt.2)

***

We sat on the brink of reality and watched the world dissolve. No one knew where we were; where we were going; where we came from. Past, present, future; these were terms of our parents’ generation. What we had learned was false: the inadvertent ramification of a society that had built their perceptions on false interpretations of how the world worked. History was a facade. All that we had learned that had happened; the destructiveness of every war, the beliefs and values of every fallen society, the achievements of all great men and women: these all were covered by our parents; covered by the security blanket of retrospective thought. To know that we would never know the minds of those who were here before us was haunting. To return to the values of the past would have been be to return to something that had never existed, does not exist, and will never exist again. And that left us in a unique situation that had only been faced by the earliest of our predecessors.

We were left to propound our own existence; to ask why we were here and where we were headed, all without the security of our parents’ beliefs to coddle us. The warm protective blanket that our parents, and their parents, and all parents before them; the blanket that had been toted around from infancy and hugged tight to the chest in times of fear or confusion; the blanket that had become a symbol of all that was safe and warm and good in the world; it was torn; ragged; its use, outgrown.

A child is born to his parents, reared by his parents, and taught by his parents. From infancy, all the child knows; every nuance of life, every belief, every conviction; all is given the credence of truth and absorbed as unquestionable fact. Each generation is raised by their parent’s beliefs. As they age, the new generation begins to observe discrepancies in their parent’s teaching. Over time, they start to form their own beliefs; their own values. Eventually, as their parents watch the sun set over a constantly darkening horizon, those who once were children watch as the sun rises over a world now theirs.

When the sun rose for us, we couldn’t see the light through the cloud of dust left settling in the atmosphere.

It wasn’t that our parents had left us physically; it was that, metaphysically, they left us nothing. Ours were parents of no faith. Our parents were raised to question authority; to question what they know. This is because their parents were raised in a ridged society in which they were allowed no voice; no questions. So they forced their voices upon society; they affected it, forcing change. When they raised their children- my parents generation- they taught them not to believe what they were told. They were taught to question the beliefs that were all so often held as inert. So they did. They decided that the entire history of societies failed to find solutions to the problems that face humanity. When our parent’s generation inherited the earth, they governed it by values with no prior basis. They created their own reality.

My parents’ generation grew up in an atmosphere of deep apathy. The world was being automated to the point where one never had to leave the house to voice a complaint: they had the internet to thank for that. The rallies and protests that were so utilized by their parents had become a way of the past. Blogs, websites, and online petitions became the main medium when it came to protest. Heartfelt passion is easily lost when the means of expressing it becomes automated.

When my parents’ generation stepped in, they were so far removed from the situation the world was in, they ran it like it was a game they could play again. It was as if they literally had never realized that they had one chance to do things right. There was no reset button, no undo button. What they did; the society they created; it was real, concrete, and it was their gift to us.

Now, as they step down, we find ourselves with no guidance. The world our parents governed failed, and we don’t know how to fix it. We are lost, left to our own contrivances, and ill-equipped to fix what is so horribly broken. We need help, but there is no one to help us. We are doomed to fail, and it scares us. Curse them. Curse our parents for leaving us with this. Curse everyone for being so self absorbed as to burden us with the problems they were both unwilling and unable to fix. The curse is left on us to bear.

We fear for ourselves, but we fear also for those who will come after us. We fear for our children. Will they understand when we tell them it wasn’t our fault? That their grandparents just didn’t care to leave them with a sustainable earth?

It’s not to say that my parents didn’t care about me. My parents loved me, dedicated their lives and energy to me. Nor is it that my friends’ parents didn’t care about them. As individuals, they loved their children with the same unabashed love my parents had for me. We grew up with a full understanding of the importance of parental love.

It’s that as a whole, our parents didn’t care about us. They raised us as their offspring, but to them, there were no offspring of the world.

Some days I think I can’t blame them for this. They grew up in an interconnected world in which one never had to leave their home: a holistic community of isolated cells. Of course they learned to raise their children as individuals and not as a group. As children coming of age, they were taught to believe in the overt power of the individual. They were taught to be different; to think different; to dress different; to act different. They were taught and encouraged to be exactly who they wanted to be, without regard to anyone else. It was such a poetic dream. Finally, they could break free from the crushing societal norms that drove the denizens of the world before them. They were all the black sheep of the flock.

But what happens when the unifying force of normality is lost? What banner can we gather under? How can a society; a group of people with a common goal; how can they function properly when they share nothing? Perhaps the society that they so carelessly built was in fact a hidden, unrealized anarchy. Every man for himself, and no one else.

AAOSS: Ozymandias

2010-07-04T16:41:00.000-07:00

But a story from An Anthology of Short Stories
> See Next (The End pt.1)
***

I met a traveler from an antique land

Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,

And on the pedestal these words appear:

'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

.....Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

.....The lone and level sands stretch far away.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley

Real fades to Fake

2010-06-03T19:47:00.000-07:00

I was recently directed to this video while on a forum:;

Here was my response. I'll probably come back to this and add to it when I have time/inspiration:

The thing with a "point" system that rewards spending is that it essentially creates a second currency. And at first glance, this may not necessarily be bad. Whenever someone wants to spend money, there is one crucial deterrent: Loss. Yes you gain whatever it is that you are buying, but you also lose money. So with any sense of gain comes a sense of loss. So how do you solve this? You reward the consumer with a second, electronic currency. This way, purchases made are no longer held back by the psychology of the loss:gain system, but rather are encouraged by a gain:gain system.

Like he said about the slot machine that pays out either way: what fool will pass up an opportunity to make a 100% guaranteed return on their investment? EVERYONE wins-- the consumer, the seller, the economy-- all of society. And since this second currency isn't tied to our limited resources, it works infinitely upward... just as long as you ensure that anything that you can "buy" with these points isn't tied to limited resources.
Of course, there would be problems (and I'm not an economist, so I'm sure I've personally missed many of them). How would it be decided how many points could be handed out for what? What if Crest wants to hand out +100 points for brushing your teeth, but Colgate wants to hand out +1000? Since neither company would incur any loss for handing out the points, the market would soon escalate astronomically...

CREST: "So Colgate's handing out +1000 points hey? Well we'll see about that... +10000 points for anyone who uses Crest!"

COLGATE: "Ooohhh reeaally Crest? You think so?"

But I'll leave that for the economists to figure out. My biggest problem is that he seems to suggest that its a GOOD idea to be able to track your every movement. And I'm going to ignore the very obvious problem with that (aka it screams 1984), and move right onto the other problem:

Do people really need more stress? Don't get me wrong, everyone loves getting a good achievement or two when playing games... but it consumes peoples lives! How many people have become addicted to a game to the point where they won't stop until they've completely "wrapped" it? And in RL, how many people spend WAY too much time at their jobs, trying to get ahead, to the point where they have no lives?

How many people would be in the casinos day and night if YOU COULDNT LOSE?

People don't need this. Who wants to live their whole life always aware that there is more that they should be doing to get ahead, to know that there's another achievement just within their grasp?

Now instead of an economy where people incur a financial loss with every gain, they'll be incuring a psychological failure with every achievement.

You can screw with my money, but don't screw with my mind.

COMING SOON:
Sometime in the near future I'm going to cover something called Augmented Reality. Until then, here's a little sneak peak into the future of corporate advertising (can you say Skittles?)

Belief in Belief

2010-05-20T14:22:00.000-07:00

Abstract

The subjectivity of human experience can be found manifest in the consciousness of the individual. Perception of the external is a direct consequence of the beliefs that we hold internally. Though founded in a tangible, substantial world, the worldviews that each of us hold are fundamentally mutable: The thoughts that I hold differ from the thoughts that you hold, and the thoughts that we each hold are different than the thoughts that a third holds. As a result, though several individuals may be present for the same event, or though several individuals may undergo experiences that are analogous in nature, the internal experience of each is subjective, and so each individual holds witness to a different event than each other. Subjectivity, however, is affected by the machinations of the collective: Religion, Education, and the doctrines that are held by the individual’s society to be true all play a crucial role in shaping the values of each self. The beliefs that each individual holds literally form the mental concepts, constructs and conjectures that shape their lives. Subjectivity of the mind is especially observable when taken to the furthest extremes of its potential, specifically those extremes produced by mental disorders or drugs. By taking the mind furthest away from normality, the subjectivity of experience may be seen, and so many facets of advanced human behaviour can be explained in one way: We believe.

An Introduction to Subjective Experience

I cannot explain the world around me in any other way than how I see it. I cannot relate the past to others without drawing from my own personal experience. And so, I must argue only from what I believe, and from what I have seen. Here, then, is a story of the convergence of two individuals who had never met, but may well have. Once, late for work, I called a cab to my apartment. Unbeknownst to me, the ride would turn out to be less of a conveyance from one point to another, so much as a journey through belief. The driver immediately struck a conversation about my hair. Dreadlocks, he told me, go by a different name in his language. They signify wisdom, and are never cut. From there, the conversation delved deeply into human belief. The driver told me of how he turned away from his religion, and I told him how I turned away from mine. Neither of us, it would seem, could believe the tenets of our origin. But what we said, the beliefs that we spoke of, addressed a deeper truth underlying the condition of our lives. Although both of us came from disparate pasts, each of us believed that there must be some underlying truth to life, which transcends religion. The fact that we were both there, in the same car, as strangers, speaking of some deeper meaning to life, signified that there was some base truth, and that we were speaking from it. Every religion, the driver told me, seeks to answer the same questions, and seeks the same betterment for its followers as every other. Though the religions can not admit it, they are one and the same, and speak from the same indelible aspects of humanity as each other— as were we.

Personal Belief

This deepest truth, this indelible aspect of humanity that we all share, is the driving force behind our every action. Every human holds it; every person is shaped by it; every self is composed of it. It is the looking glass through which we see the universe. It is taught to us, and we are born to it. We choose it, we decide it, and yet we have no choice whatsoever in our conviction to it. It manifests itself in every facet of our daily life, and it is the basis of our every conscious action. Sam Harris, in his book The End of Faith, likens it to a lever, which, when pulled, “moves almost everything else in a person’s life” (12). It is hard to imagine that there could be cognisance without belief. In order to accept any truth, in order to ascertain legitimacy to any claim, we must give credence to the claim, and so we must believe it to be true. One cannot believe something that he does not believe to be true. Or, as Harris puts it: “Belief that aims at representing our knowledge about the world requires that we believe a given proposition to be true” (61). Self-fulfilling and obvious, these statements seem so trivial that, at their surfaces, they do not appear to solicit further inquiry. Yet, they explain the motivations behind our decisions. In general one will not act on something unless he believes that what he is acting upon to be true: If he believes that it is in his best interest to receive an education, it is likely he will go to school; likewise, if he does not believe there is a God, he probably won’t attend church. Of course, there are many reasons why he would act contrary to his beliefs; perhaps he could not afford school. Maybe a loved one asked him to attend church. But would he pray to God when he was alone?

Our beliefs must have logical coherence to our every day experiences. Our brains, the physical entities that house what we consider to be our minds, operate in a manner that is so complex, that at present, it is beyond their own capabilities to fully understand. And yet, the brain operates on a very basic level. Harris, quoting Stephen Pinker, explains that the brain is nothing more than the “orderly mirroring between a system that processes information... and the laws of logic or probability” (58). Above all else, our beliefs must make sense, both in relation to the outside world, and to the other beliefs that we already hold. The brain is nothing more than the firing of neurons through synapses, which connect in an intricate way. Each connection fires in a logical pattern that mirrors the logic obtained by the peripheral senses; each physical connection of the brain forms a mental conjecture that parallels it (58). These physical connections relate to each other in a manner that makes sense in comparison to the other physical connections, and the mental processes that underlie them do likewise.

Belief is an unavoidable aspect of what it is to be human; belief is that which makes us conscious. It is what gives us literal value in our life; it is the set of rules that each of us holds that tells us what is right, what is wrong, what is correct, and what is not. Without belief, we would not know how to act, nor would we be able to explain any aspect of our existence. Belief is more than a set of principles that may or may not be have value; in the eyes of the individual, belief is always truth.

Societal Belief

Suppose you were born in a sealed room, today, as you are now, but with no conception of the past. Some questions would naturally arise: How did you get there? Why were you there? Who put you there? Now suppose there were others in the room with you, also born that same day, and also with no conception of the past. You might ask what your relationship to them was, how you were supposed to act toward them, and how your actions related with theirs. Because there would be no immediate, obvious answers to these questions, the best you could do would be to observe your situation, and to logically deduce the best solutions that you could fathom. If the answers that you came up with seemed to fit to your situation, and if they did not contradict the observations you made through your dealings with both yourself, and with the others, then you would believe the answers to be true. The other people in the room, who would have been subjected to the same questions, the same loose ends that needed ties, would have undergone the same process as you. Some may have arrived at the same conclusions; some may have arrived at conclusions separate from yours. But each person in the room had to have arrived at conclusions that made sense in accordance to the observations that they made as individuals.

As the people in the room conversed, sharing their conclusions, those who held similar ideologies would form groups. Each group, holding separate explanations than each other group, would believe that they were correct in their deductions. Each other group would believe them to be wrong. But all groups, which would collectively be composed of every individual, would have answered the same questions as each other, and with equal correctness. No group, nor any individual, would be wrong, as each had undergone the same process of questioning, with each finding answers that justified their questions. Thus we find religion, and education, and science. Through this we find the tenets that run society. And through this, we find disparity of belief. Each individual is subject to his own perceptions, and all groups of individuals are subject to theirs.

But individuality does not signify seclusion; not only would there be intra-communication of belief between the members of each group, but there would be inter-communication between all groups. Though personal and subjective, belief is fundamentally mutable, and so it is affected by many things, including the beliefs and actions of others. The Dalai Lama, in his book The Universe in a Single Atom, explains this paradox of subjective yet communal belief:

“The world... is constituted by a web of dependently originating and interconnected realities, within which dependently originated causes give rise to dependently originated consequences according to dependently originating laws of causality. What we do and think in our own lives, then, becomes of extreme importance as it affects everything we’re connected to.” (69)

The groups in the room, all connected to each other by both the relationships that they hold with each other, and by the physical qualities of the room itself, which they all share as a part of their existence, are intrinsically affected by each other by an elaborate and changing web of causality.

For every question that can be raised, there are multitudes of answers that may explain it. For every answer, a different belief pertaining to the nature of the individual’s reality may be formed. For every system of beliefs explaining reality, there is a separate doctrine, a religion, a curriculum, or a philosophy of reality. From each of these systems, our existence may be explained, and from each of these systems, a society can attempt to explain its origin, its state of being, and so may undertake the daily functions that are required for the coherence of a functional civilization. From belief, every group of individuals is formed.

The Extremities of Mind

Coherence of thought, coherence of belief, is crucial to the construction of a sane reality. When coherence fails, the perceived concepts, constructs, and conjectures that encompass an individual’s perceptions clash, and explanation of existence, both from the mundane of the everyday, and from the totality of all observation, becomes warped, changed, and fails. Paradigms shift. The machinations of the world confuse. False becomes truth. Truth becomes false. Individuality becomes secluded, and there is no other to share in belief. The ruminations of the individual are cast as reality, and an onslaught of psychological states of mind occur.

Belief may be deluded. At the extremities of this delusion, the manifestation of belief actualizes, the physical interpretation of the individual’s world is perceived as real, and there is often no way for the perceiver to “to distinguish between accurate and deluded perception” (Dalai Lama, 173). A man inflicted by schizophrenia, for example, may experience Capgras delusion, a disorder in which the individual becomes convinced that a loved one has been replaced by an exact double (Health Encyclopedia). He may also experience a related syndrome called Fregoli delusion, in which he would believe that several people were in fact the same person in disguise (Taber’s Dictionary). There are a whole host of delusions that one may undergo, and they are all subject to the beliefs that he or she holds pertaining to the situation that they must perceive.

A man in the desert who seeks to quench his thirst may envision a pristine waterfall filling a basin of hope. The man, confident that salvation is imminent, might seek out the water, only to find upon arrival that the vision he had been so confident in only moments ago was nothing but a hallucination of his mind. The man though, may not be so lucky; the vision could persist, and the man, drinking only from a projection of his psyche, would deem that his thirst has been quenched. A man, who has eaten from the peyote cactus, might suffer from delusions far more surreal, yet just as real. One who has consumed psilocybin, or maybe lysergic acid diethylamide, or smoked salvia divinorum, may undergo a dissociative state, in which personality is split. Time, space, color and sound may become mixed, dilated, and perceived as different from what they were before (Corsini Encyclopedia). For the man, the world would have shifted to an entirely new perceptual paradigm.

In all of these cases, there is one factor that ties them together. Although the beliefs may have been instanced by different causes, they all had the effect of causing a perception shift that manifested itself as truth. Drugs and disorders of the mind allow a window into the truest nature of perception, for they are the (warped) manifestations of perception itself. They take belief the furthest away from normality as possible, and so, in comparing the experiences of these extremes to the experiences of the otherwise ordinary, it can be seen that the difference between what we see, and what is, is but a belief.

In the conversation that I had with the cab driver, neither of us could pinpoint what exactly that indelible quality of humanity, that transcendent, underlying truth to life, was. We both knew it was there. We both believed that there had to have been something that allowed us to give proper discourse on the nature of our own existence. But we could not fathom what exactly it was. All we knew was that I came from a past of experiences unlike his own, that he came from a past unlike mine, and that we were there, talking to each other, in that car, about the nature of life, and of belief itself, and that we were speaking of the same truth. I’m not sure exactly what words the driver would use to explain that conversation; perhaps he would elucidate different than I. But I do know that what I experienced, what I witnessed from my eyes, and from my ears, and from all of my peripheral senses, cast a vision of holistic belief, which originated in the subjective mind of the beholder.

Works Cited

Dalai Lama. The Universe In A Single Atom. New York: Broadway, 2005. Print.

"Capgras syndrome." The Royal Society of Medicine Health Encyclopedia. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Ltd, 2000. Credo Reference. Web. 03 December 2009.

"Fregoli’s delusion." Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary. Philadelphia: F.A.Davis Company, 2009. Credo Reference. Web. 03 December 2009.

"Hallucinogenic Drugs." The Concise Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioral Science. Hoboken: Wiley, 2004. Credo Reference. Web. 03 December 2009.

Harris, Sam. The End of Faith. New York: Norton, 2004. Print.

Reasons for Non-Being a Buddhist (or assigning myself to any religion or science)

2010-05-14T15:51:00.000-07:00

The following is a free-flow, sort of an attempt to put my bigger ideas down on paper. You'll notice it becomes redundant at times, often adding on to a point I have already made. It's funny how you can build on a previous thought by restating it differently, giving it a larger or different scope of applicability.

So here are the reasons why I cannot belong to any organized system of beliefs, even if it closely matches my own in many areas.

I am my own person.

I am a free-thinker.

My thoughts have the utmost importance of all things that are important in my life.

All things that I feel and do and say are effects of my ideas.

I have many ideas. Many of them are big. Many of them cannot be proven. Many of them only I alone can fully appreciate.

Many of my thoughts coincide with the thoughts of others.

Some of my ideas, when taken as a resolved (general) whole coincide perfectly with the resolved ideas of others.

None of my ideas, when taken as a refined (detailed, fully explained) whole, can ever coincide perfectly with the refined ideas of any other.

I have many ideas, many of which cannot completely be reconciled with other ideas, be them either of my own or of another’s creation.

Ideas contradict by their very nature.

I believe all of my ideas are possibility.

I believe in nothing.

I believe that nothing can happen.

I believe that everything that does happen arises from the nothing that can happen.

Nothing can have direction.

Nothing can have direction only in relation to itself.

Because there is nothing prior to nothing, nothing can only refer to nothing or after.

If nothing refers to after nothing, then all that is left after nothing is something.

Nothing has direction after it ceases to transpire.

Nothing is to something as something is to another thing.

Something doesn’t require nothing to be something but nothing requires something to be something.

I believe that everything has an order in that it has no order.

I believe that from this lack of order, order arises.

I believe that as time progresses, complexity increases.

I believe that this is because everything is related to everything else, and so order can be measured in terms of relationships.

I do not believe these relationships can be measured without looking at the totality of all relationships.

I believe that to look at the complete whole is to look at the simplest form.

I believe that to encapsulate all of complexity would be to enclose everything into a single unit.

I do not believe this single unit can be expressed without a view to the complexity that is entangled within it.

I believe that while the single unit, or the whole, remains immutable, the complexity within is mutable.

This mutable complexity cannot be measured without making an affirmative statement as to its state.

Something that is mutable cannot be measured without reference to a previous state.

Something that is mutable can only be measured in relation to itself.

Actual truth cannot be derived by relation to oneself.

Our only truths come from self-relation.

What I believe is truth.

My truths change periodically— sometimes rapidly.

My truths do not represent the whole.

No truths can represent the whole, except for when the truth is the whole.

All truths are of the whole.

All truths are different.

My truths cannot match your truths.

My truths are my beliefs, and your truths are your beliefs.

Though both of our truths may intersect or run parallel, they do not overlay one another.

My truths cannot be identical to your truths.

Any attempt to reconcile my truths with yours will lead to loss of truth.

If your doctrine appears to match mine, it doesn’t match mine.

No matter how much we agree, we don’t.

I can only believe in what I believe.

I believe only what makes sense to me.

I am willing to believe what doesn’t make sense to me.

What doesn’t make sense to me must have sense.

Everything makes sense, even when it doesn't.

Something doesn’t have to make sense when related to another thing that makes different sense.

Sense can make sense only to itself.

Sense is derived from itself.

Sense and belief and truth are all derived from each other, as well as themselves.

Everything is reciprocal, everything cycles.

The cycle grows more complex, and larger.

Each cycle returns to the first, only this time with extra information— an extra iteration.

Often, the extra information is the same as what is already present.

Sometimes, it isn't.

Even when it isn’t, it is.

Information can be reduced to a different form.

Information can be reduced to the same form.

Information can be expanded to a different form.

Information can be expanded to the same form.

Though information may take different forms, it remains fundamentally the same.

Information cannot be changed, but different formations can be selected.

The order of the pieces of information present is relevant to the matter of the information’s content.

This can be viewed as both true and untrue, depending on what you look at as information.

12 is not 21.

21 is not 12.

We can recognize a difference in these statements.

Yet, these statements are the same.

Because 12 is not 21, the order of the pieces of information present is relevant to the matter of its content.

Because 21 is not 12, the order of the pieces of information present is relevant to the matter of its content.

These statements are not the same.

The object is always held in relation to the subject.

Information is represented by the individual pieces that mark it, which in themselves do not represent the entirety of the information that they represent.

Information is not derived from the individual pieces that mark it, but rather from the information that the pieces seek to mark.

1 is 1 and 2 is 2 and 1 plus 2 is 3 BUT 1 left of 2 is not 1 nor 2 nor 3 AND 2 left of 1 is not 1 left of 2, nor 1 nor 2, nor 3, FOR 2 left of 1 is 21 AND 1 left of 2 is 12 WHILE 21 and 12 divided by 2 is neither 21 nor 12.

My thoughts often stray from the beaten path.

I cannot make difference of the path behind me and the path not yet taken.

Often, even I cannot see where I am going.

Often, even I cannot know what I am saying.

My belief system is marked by the individual beliefs that I hold.

When my beliefs change, my belief system changes.

No other belief system can match my belief system.

I cannot assign myself to a belief that is not my own.

I cannot assign myself to a system of belief that is not my own.

My beliefs are my own.

The Perspectives of Felice Varini

2010-04-13T18:06:00.000-07:00

I love optical illusions. What can I say? When I was a kid, they fascinated me. To me, staring at an optical illusion was the closest I would ever come to finding magic. And what kid isn't fascinated by magic? Now, I have seen most of the optical illusions out there, but the concept still fascinates me: Your eyes see what is not there, but believe it could be. It's like peering into another dimension.

A couple of years ago, I was browsing through some optical illusions online, and I was disappointed that all I could find were the same illusions that I found when I was a kid. It seemed that either there are only a limited number of ways to trick the eye, or that the artistic creativity required to create something that amazes me was no longer there. And then, I stumbled upon a type of image that I had never seen before. It was unlike any optical illusion I had ever seen, because it was not an optical illusion; it was an art form. And it was the most striking art I have ever seen.

The picture was of yellow lines painted across a blue door frame, in a blue room. What was striking was that the frame had no door; the lines seemed to float in mid-air, as if one could walk right through them. As it turns out, one could.

The image was one of Felice Varini's pieces of art. I knew I had to find more. I searched his name and found his website, and immediately downloaded any picture I could find. I put them together in a video and posted it on YouTube. I had to let others know.

What struck me most about Varini's art was, of course, the perspective on reality that it presented. It was not an illusion; it was real. But it all depended on how you looked at it. The images were 2D objects, often basic geometrical shapes, painted on top of a 3D space. Usually, when we want to achieve this, we must choose a single plane on which to place it. If we don't, the 2D image will become distorted, stretching along different horizons. What Varini did (and still does), was distort the shape before it was placed, so that when it was placed, it could be viewed without distortion.

In practice, the concept is fairly simple. In fact, we witness it every time we open our eyes. What we see is affected by the space it lies upon. As the observer approaches the object it observes, the object appears to grow larger. As the observer moves away, the object grows smaller. There's nothing new about this concept. I could of told you it when I was a kid.

The reason I think of this as such amazing art then, is that it fulfills exactly what I feel good art should: It doesn't just provide a comment on reality, nor does it tell me anything about it. What it does, is demonstrate it. Varini's art shows me that everything that we hold witness to can be held witness to only from a single perspective. There are many, even an infinite number of possible points of view from which one can look at anything. If one changes perspective, then what is seen also changes. Everything we know relies on how we look at it in order to find form. Without an observer, an object still exists. But it doesn't know how, or in what manner it should do so.

Vision to Change

2010-04-07T02:11:00.001-07:00

Every movement needs a voice. Every voice starts as a whisper. Who will shout it? Who will sit at the masthead and direct the voices that will affect change? There are many ways to propel a movement— music, art, and politics are some. But these things need a common forum to speak through, to direct their voices as if through a megaphone. Activists need a publication to promote their agenda; they need a printed record of their discontent. They need someone to chronicle their actions and to proclaim their leaders, and print publications— mostly magazines— fill this need. And every magazine needs direction; it needs a leader; it needs an editor. There have been many magazines that have sat at the head of a movement, pushing it through the door, into the political field, and more times than not, it is the editor who has dedicated the long hours and visionary power necessary for this to happen.

Take perhaps one of the most famous, and most popular examples of a magazine that has started as a grassroots magazine only to turn into one of the most powerful focal points for one of the greatest activist movements in recent history: Rolling Stone magazine, which has for the past forty-odd years used its political and cultural influence to select and popularize some of the greatest rock and roll bands to play an arena. It has argued its political position to such an extent that one can imagine it to have swayed even elections. In the nineteen-sixties, it served as one of the most iconic figure-heads in the drive for political change that rocked the world. And the man who started it all, the man who directed the vision— the man who chose which articles contained the proper political opinions that would be read by many— was Jann Wenner, the editor of the fabled magazine.
Starting with $7500 of borrowed money, Jann started a magazine that was “printed on pulp paper and infused with a missionary zeal about the musical and social promises of rock 'n' roll.” Under the direction of an editor with a zest for politics and a need to affect change, the magazine became a bastion of serious musical criticism, a voice of liberal angst” (O’Brien). Without an angst filled vision to project an angst filled voice, it is impossible for a publication to put forth an opinion that can have any power in politics. Imagine a publication in which a writer writes an article promoting a certain politician, only to have the article that follows it denounce that very same politician. It would not work. It would come across as wishy-washy fence-sitting, and the reader would walk away either confused or lethargic. The writers must all work to meet the same ends, and it must be the editor who decides what ends must be met.

Take again another example of a music-based revolution that took place a decade after the revolution that would make Rolling Stone so popular. This revolution too was based on the counter-culture ideals of rock and roll, but the magazine that helped make it popular was infinitely less mainstream. Punk magazine, established and edited by John Holmstrom, found its base of operations only blocks away from the now infamous CBGB’s, a club that would come to house the founding members of the punk rock musical genre. Less known to the general public, however, is the influence that Punk had on the entire punk movement. The name of the magazine itself is said to have inspired what would become the moniker of the entire musical genre (Cometbus). The magazine was one of the first to cover acts such as the Ramones and Blondie, back in the days when the Ramones and Blondie were nothing more than bands thrashing around in some club called CBGB’s. The magazine is even said to have brought the punk movement to Europe, before Europe had even heard a single note of punk music. There, kids were “acting out scenes from the pages of Punk #1 and calling themselves punks” while asking at the same time “‘What does this punk rock sound like?’” (Cometbus) And the man behind all of this, the man who can take the credit for spearheading the magazine that helped propel this entire social movement into action, was none other than the editor of the magazine, John Holmstrom. Like most editors with the dedication to impart a message, Holmstrom put much more on the line than the sweat off his brow. He put up his good-health, reputation, and the contents of his wallet as well. Struggling “just to make enough to eat,” Holmstrom would eventually have to make the decision that the magazine would have to fold— not once, but twice (Cometbus).

Of course, social change does not have to center around music. There are many other causes that many activists actively promote and fight for; there is one in particular that is infamously popular among hundreds of thousands, or even millions of people. This is the movement for the legalization of marijuana, and sitting on the coffee-room table of many of these people, one is sure to find at least one issues of a magazine called High Times. The magazine, established by Tom Forcade (who also, for a short time, helped finance Punk), was edited by Steven Hager for most of its existence. He is the only example of an editor explored here who did not have a hand in the creation of the magazine that he worked for, and yet, his contributions to his cause cannot be forgotten. Upon his arrival at the magazine, he oversaw the removal of content that centered on hard drugs, turning it into what it stands as now. Under Hager’s guidance, the magazine became what is now not only a marijuana centred magazine, but more importantly, it is what the current High Times executive editor, John Mailer, calls “a magazine about our civil liberties” (Sind). Though the editorial duties of the magazine have passed hands from Hager to Mailer, both held (and hold) the same ideal of the protection civil liberties, and used it as a focal point through which the articles of the magazine were to be focused.

An editor can sit by the sidelines and edit, but if he does, he will watch his publication become lost among the sea of publications that have no discernable names. He will watch his readers come and go. Some will be affected by some of the articles, some will not. And sometimes, a publication wishes for nothing more than this. Sometimes, a publication does not wish to affect change. But if the intent is to be heard, if the intent is to see the political or social field changed, then an editor must focus the energy of his publications through a concise vision. The people that it takes to fill this role, like Wenner, Holmstrom, or Hager and Mailer, must be willing to spend long hours directing the writers who work under them, orchestrating the movement, selecting figureheads and ideologies to present. They must be willing to not only devote their time and energy to the movement, but to be a part of it, to live it, to become it.

Works Cited

Cometbus, Aaron. “Punk magazine’s John Holmstrom.” Maximum Rocknroll 311 (2009). Web. 24 Mar. 2009. <http://maximumrocknroll.com/2009/10/17/john-holmstrom/>

O’Brien, Timothy L. “Will You Still Need Me, Will You Still Read Me?” New York Times 25 Dec (2005). Web. 24 Mar. 2009.

Sind, Bianca. “High Times announces non-pot format.” Cannabis Culture 15 Mar (2004). Web. 24 Mar. 2009. <http://www.cannabisculture.com/v2/articles/3359.html>

Nailed

2010-04-07T02:05:00.000-07:00

Okay, so here’s what I intend to do: I intend to forget it ever happened. I intend to pretend it wasn’t me. I intend to walk away from it, without a second thought, without a care or a damn or so much as a suggestion that it matters. I intend to go about my life, without so much as the acknowledgment that I’m hiding something. Because I’m not; it never happened. It’s not going to affect me any further. It’s not going to affect my friends, or my family, or every person I have ever known (most of who are probably now dead). It never happened. And it certainly wasn’t me.

I mean, it was just a question, a thought, a minor slip of the tongue. It was one of those things that you do without thinking, without foresight to the unfathomable consequences that might arise from it. It was petty; hardly worth a second glance, really. And that’s why I’m going to go about sitting here in my room, with my cigarettes and my bottle of rum, and I’m going to forget it ever happened.

You know, there’s this old folktale, or saying, or nursery rhyme, or whatever it is, that starts out “For want of a nail.” I’m sure you’ve heard it. It’s the one that teaches children of the cascading effects (or is it affects?) of their actions, in which a shoe is lost, and a horse, and a rider, and a battle, and a kingdom, all because of that damn nail. It’s one of those didactic tales that teaches the effect of affects, which in turn affect other consequences: The Butterfly Affect (or is it Effect?), as some people call it. I think the Buddhists call it Karma. Maybe I just have bad Karma.

I guess the question is for me: At what point was I in need of a nail? When did the butterfly flap his pretty little wings and start that typhoon, a world removed? How far back into my life should I go? Was it when I first thought of the question, or was it when I asked it? Was it when I was first learning to program, or was it when I decided to use those programming skills for mischief, and become a hacker? Was it when my daddy first laid eyes on my mommy, or was it when they met in my consummation?

I’ve thought about laying the blame on someone else. I suppose I shouldn’t lay it on my parents for having me, but there must be someone who is at fault. There’s someone— someone who had to have caused it. But really, what did they cause? It’s just a minor bug, and you know, after thinking about it, I kind of think it’s really best to just ignore it, and let it play out. Someone will deal with it. The governments, and the think-tanks, and all of the well-meaning citizens who know their way around the internet, all of the people who are still alive and have it in their capacity to make it right again, they’re the ones who’ll make it go away— because for me, it’s already gone.

All I wanted to know was if it was possible to hack into the root servers. You know, the thirteen DNS root servers that ALL internet traffic connects to. NASA has one (they’re not going to be happy). And the U.S. Army has one (they’re gonna be REAL pissed). The University of Maryland has one too (tough luck I guess, Maryland). And then there are the others. Really, I was just curious. Thirteen root servers to run all of the domain names? They just seemed very... vulnerable.

I’m not even sure how I did it. It just happened. The internet shut down. The lights flickered a little. The world got a little bit colder. And then the reports started coming in on the news— “Eat this, Y2K.” Worldwide power failures, hospitals shut down, traffic grids not working: Nuclear holocaust. Whatever. It was nothing, just a thought, a question— hardly worth a second glance.

All I know is it wasn’t me. I was just sitting here, in my room, a million miles away from anyone important, on my computer, typing from my keyboard. They were just letters, just words, just strings of characters with so little meaning. They had no affect, there was no effect. It wasn’t me. There was never any nail. There was never any need of a nail.

Well, there’s a knock at my door (Karma, is that you?) They sound like they’re someone important. I wonder what they want? I guess I’ll just have to go and tell them that it wasn’t me, and that it certainly never happened.

My mom and dad are gonna be so MAD.

Eternit Eyes

2010-04-07T00:20:00.001-07:00

The most poignant of ideas come with closed eyes. Never forget your roots. Remember always the darkened room of your childhood, from which the greatest of fantasies arise. A thought, a time in which we may survive, a place in which we may be; here we are empty of the outside. Here all is nothing, and nothing, an idea unrealized, is all.

And then it is realized. Whatever. An idea. A form without form. A here and a now that is not present. What could be. What might be. What is? Now. We explore the idea, for hours on end. We are the idea. Now. With closed eyes. In the dark. Through it. Without form to see. The greatest of fantasies. Our roots. Now. How grand that realization may seem when it is, seen, as truth. Now, always, everywhere, Don’t ignore it. Don’t ignore your childhood: that which all that you see and know and realize and wish to be arises from. It is you. It is all you can be. And it is seen, remembered, through closed eyes.

You remember, don’t you? I do. I remember remembering what just happened, and through it, a world, a nirvana, a flow of stuttered words in which every tale I told was true, no matter how many times it changed. Tall tales of the mind, told to the self, and believed as a hope which is always achieved. Fantasy made real. Reality made false. Dreams which hold true. Nightmares which terrify. Sweat stained sheets from which my ideas may be a father. A bedrock which has hardened as a past of grand delusions, from which my children may build upon. A memory never experienced. A hope never realized. A now that could have been. A dream left forgotten. Through closed eyes.

But it is remembered. With each telling the image magnifies, changes, yet holds true. With every story told there is another, and a new world, a now, is. With every form the dream grows, up, toward the moon. The sun. All that we can achieve. A height to be realized beyond despair, beyond failure, beyond the greatest fall.

Blindly we follow the light, in hope of the destination. From the labyrinth coiling through our mind, a window over a vast ocean is seen: the only landmark, a sun. A hazed vision of white with red dots growing stronger as we near the greatest spot, wherever that may be. The form of a “V” passes our sight, and we are reminded of the distance of land. Our land. My land. Earth which all who may survive do remember. How far is it? Our origin. The first. Our sanction from the infinity of the sun?

Back home it brings us, away from the sky. On land I find myself, with only a where and a why. If only my eyes were open, perhaps I would know. But shut, it is here that I arrived. A vast infinite, false and eternit, of calamitous dreams. A reference which I may only claim as mine; a dream existing only in my mind. Shut from the world, the world is mine.

Rivea Corymbosa (LSA)

2010-04-07T00:16:00.000-07:00

The seed of the morning glory

folds, one hundred times

and drops;

A bolt is thrown,

two and four collide: Jupiter

is born once more.

Sunshine is swallowed,

and beauty blossoms:

a garden to hide

the earth beneath.

At dusk,

the petals fall and die

Darkness follows;

the garden is lost.

The blackened sky allows no light;

The King of Gods

whimpers, then cowers

Snakes crawl from twisted trees;

Bitten apples are cast from heaven

Only shrivelled leaves

and naked stems

are left to hide the dirt.

Ghostly images:

silhouettes of what once was,

cast upon the hardened soil:

flitter across the Earth.

The world turns,

by a degree;

The sunshine returns,

and the morning glory

blossoms,

embraces its beauty

Rebirth.

Vessels of Deception

2010-04-07T00:12:00.001-07:00

The writer manipulates words so that a truth may be told. The scientist deconstructs reality so it may be better understood. The propagandist takes what the scientist has discovered, and uses the words of a writer to construct a manipulated reality of the world he wishes it to be. There is power in words, and there is struggle for dominion over reality, over the world, over the beliefs and support of the common man. The propagandist knows that for the world to lie in his hands, he must first place it in the hands of the people, so that they may present it back to him with their mark of approval. The mark of approval. The one and only that is of significance.

The propagandist is acutely aware of the power of collective belief, as well as the malleability that such belief entails. He will use the susceptibility of human emotion to further his goals, and he will make the world feel proud for it. The propagandist is the most dangerous man in the world. He is the puppet master, the thief in the night. He is the one who will take your freedom and suspend it below his manipulating pen. He will animate you to action, put words in your mouth, and you will thank him for being given the chance to live. We are all characters in his play. He presents detail and we use it to build his scene. He is the author, and we his voice. But it is our voice, so why do we lie for him? Why do we allow him to move our lips so that he may speak? Why must we dance when he moves his pen? Perhaps we can’t see the strings. Maybe we choose to believe that the propagandist exists only in fairytale. Maybe we refuse to believe that we have been misled our entire lives. Or maybe we refuse to admit that our blind faith in words that look pretty enables the existence of the propagandist, and consequently, we refuse to admit that we are all he.

How many parents raising their children in a developed country and a righteous environment have absolutely no problem allowing their children to read Archie comics? That is Archie, the famously wholesome all American teen who, along with his gang of chums, resolves every argument, strives always for good, and most importantly never drinks or does drugs. Say no to sex, Archie tells us, you can have fun without (“Note” par. 1-4). Perhaps. But you can also have fun with these things, and many people do. So why do we accept this as a wholesome truth to teach children, rather than be offended and angered by the propagandist who wishes to brainwash them? Simply, we are blind first and foremost to propaganda that we agree with. Here, the propagandist must only write, for there is no convincing that must be done. But this is his hook, because once we have accepted some propaganda, we have accepted it all, as well as the shroud that covers it.

That is not to say that Archie comics have evil intent. In fact, most propaganda is created with the intent of casting the world into a better view, a better state of being. Archie will not swear or use racial slang. When dealing with issues that are politically incorrect, he takes the high road, and uses symbols to mask the blasphemy. As do we. Not only do we propagate opinion which we believe to be for the betterment of the world, but we actively use symbols to deceive; to mask what we believe to be crude, wrong, or politically incorrect. When H1N1 first hit the world, it wasn’t referred to as H1N1. No, the outbreak that we grew to fear was referred to as the swine flu. We were to understand it came from pigs, so we avoided eating pork. And then in late April, 2009, the World Health Organization told us not to call it swine flu. Refer to it as H1N1, they told us; the world’s pork producers have suffered enough (Lynn par. 1). The intent here was by no means evil in nature. Aside from teaching us that swine flu is only swine flu if it is in pigs, the WHO was simply trying to save the pork industry from financial ruin. And yet, we were being brazenly led by words so that this objective could be met.

This masking of words for political correctness, coined by George Orwell as doublespeak, is no different than our acceptance of Archie comics as a source of moral fibre. We may agree with the underlying intentions behind the worldview being spread, but in doing so, we enter a dark corridor of manipulation and deception in which intention becomes difficult to discern. Only with sharp and watchful eyes may we catch the propagandist, this thief in the night, in the act of stealing our freedom and making us his puppets. Only by recognizing that intention is not always well-meaning may we choose what to believe. And only by realizing that if something we read is not fully understood, then it is entirely possible that that is because it cannot be. This is the lesson learned by the duellist, who explains his findings to the protagonist in Edgar Allan Poe’s “Mystification:”

To my surprise, what he read proved to be a most horribly absurd account of a duel between two baboons. He now explained the mystery; showing that the volume, as it appeared prima facie, was written upon the plan of the nonsense verses of Du Bartas; that is to say, the language was ingeniously framed so as to present to the ear all the outward signs of intelligibility, and even of profundity, while in fact not a shadow of meaning existed. (115)

Of the duellist, it is later said that he would have “died a thousand deaths rather than acknowledge his inability to understand anything and everything in the universe that had ever been written about the duello” (115). The volume which the duellist reads from may well have been written by the propagandist, and it is only through vigilant reading that the duellist comes to recognize his deception, this mystification which has been cast through slanted words.

Only by recognizing the various forms that the propagandist uses to deceive may we no longer be mystified. By engaging ourselves in his writing, we may engage in the duel, and cut the strings by which we are led. It is through us that the propagandist may exist; without our stamp of approval, no view may be passed as reality. We must not be manipulated by words which look pretty. We must be vigilant as the duellist is. We must deconstruct as the scientist does. We are the voice of reality, and when we speak, we are heard. So let us speak only the truth of the writer, rather than spread the lies of the most dangerous man in the world.

Works Cited

Lynn, Jonathan. “WHO Changes Flu Virus Strain Name from Swine Flu.” Reuters 30 Apr. 2009. 22 Oct. 2009. Web .

“Note to Parents.” Archie Comics Online. 2007. 23 Oct. 2009. Web .

Poe, Edgar Allan. “Mystification.” Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. Cambridge, UK: Worth Press, 2008. Print.

The Most Macabre, Perfect of Constructs

2010-04-07T00:10:00.000-07:00

The Madman stood in front of The Jury of Scientists and proclaimed his case:

“Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, the scene you are about to witness will instil within you with an utmost repulsion. Prior to this occasion, I have been unable to allow any other to witness this most extraordinary of constructs, because through this construct, the most base of qualities, which we consider to be the foundation of goodness and well-being manifested in the goodwill of humanity, are defaced. The concept here is executed in a manner which any human being, being wholly conscious to the preciousness of the proliferation of life around us, can only consider to be a macabre insult to the being of our very souls. This is why I felt that I had to, and still now must, employ the highest of all discretions in the revelation of this construct. Knowing that I could show no individual this without revealing it to the entire of Society, I implored you, as I implore you now, to give audience to this realization as you would give audience to the man who would murder your most beloved family. First, listen to my story, and only after it is complete, then may you judge and execute me as a mad man.”

The Judge, the head of the Scientists, sighed: “Sir, we have already heard your plea. That is why we have granted you this audience; a privilege afforded to few. So please, amaze us.”

Had The Madman cared to look, he would have noticed the faint smiles of derision which could be seen upon the faces of the Scientists in attendance, as well as the faces of the citizen witnesses holding attendance in the viewing gallery. But The Madman knows no derision, for in the importance of his theories, The Madman is always confident.

“Indeed. Well then. What I hold before you, each and every one of you has held before you before, as you hold it before you now. And that is why this is the most Macabre of Constructs, as well as the most Perfect. Watch, as your reality shifts forever.”

The scientists rolled their eyes.

The Madman drew forth from his satchel a Human skull; a membrane-less casing with a circumcising incision drawn three hundred and sixty degrees about the peak, from forehead to neck, so that only a human brain could be seen protruding from the pear-shaped bone cage.

And the eyes. The eyes. The eyes protruded from their vestibule sockets as a camera protrudes from a wall. The cloudy white globes seemed pristine in their condition, each retaining that same soul-peering quality that a living human being retains; each pupil and iris searching throughout the room, attempting to focus on some quality beyond the quality of that which they most directly gazed upon.

“This is MADNESS!” A Scientist yelled.

“But the madness is yet to come.” Replied The Madman. “For what you hold before you is not the construct- no, for indeed my good man, what we hold before us is but a manner in which to see it.”

“No! NO! I will not have this monstrosity in my Court of Science! Bailiff!” The Judge was lived: “Bailiff! Haul this man away! Discredit his name, this Madman! Discredit his theories, this Madman! The deepest clutches of purgatory do this Madman too well!”

“Ah. But for haste, only moments ago you chastened me, Your Honour. But was I not speaking of this very incident? This very up-cry which I predicted at the conception of the concept, and in doing so made it my mission to employ the highest of all discretions, so that this vision may be seen? Isn’t it I who just said that to give audience to myself is to give audience to the man who murdered your wife, your child, your mother and your father? Isn’t it I who proclaimed only moments ago, that you must judge what you see only after it has been held witness to, and only then may the decree of madness be passed?”

The judge paused, still livid, but as a wise scientist who considers all possibility as possibility, considered what The Madman had said.

“Speak Madman. Speak your last words, and explain this monstrosity.”

“Your Honour; Upstanding Men and Women of the Jury; Citizens who hold audience, I present to you, Man.” And with that The Madman turned the brain on. And from the eyes, an ethereal light shone into the wall.

It was now that those who held audience to the spectacle could see that those orbs which held within them an unnatural spark of life were not the protruding cameras that they at first appeared to be.

No. Those disembodied eyes were not cameras. Those eyes did not see. They did not focus their attention on any quality. Those eyes did not gaze- those eyes were not of the same nature as the eyes of the audience, for those eyes could project.

And herein all the scientists and audience members saw the true source of macabre insult.

And here the audience gasped, if gasp is the word- for some cried.

From a spark in the brain the eyes drew upon recorded imagery projected from the mind of man. The mind, sparked to motion by The Madman, relinquished it’s memories through the eyes. And upon the wall in front of the Judge; in front of the Scientists; in front of the audience, lay a dimension that they had never envisioned possible.

For of the wall, there was only a scene.

The projection was unlike any three dimensional projection seen before. It was as if the room had suddenly grown in size, the wall disappearing, and instead in it’s place lay precisely what this mind in it’s circumcised cage saw.

Like looking in a mirror, the horizon of the room doubled- except there was no mirror, and this image was not a reflection.

It was a scene of a sidewalk, lined with trees, following from the point of view of the brain that must have observed it. There was no distinction between the image and the room it lay within.

The Madman spoke as his Construct projected itself through the ever dilating pupils of the eyes:

“This, my fellow Humans. This is what I came here to present to you. Do you understand now why it was required that I should employ the utmost of discretion? Do you understand why I have risked my good-health, reputation, and well-being, to bring this to you? Ladies and Gentlemen, what you hold before you, is the physical manifestation of what this human brain has seen.

‘It is the pinnacle of observation; it is the ultimate realization. Now, rest assured,” The Madman smiled. “I am not as mad as you originally presumed. You see, this brain, which is encased in this skull, was never alive. No, I had it built. Illicitly, yes, but such is the sacrifice made in the advancement of the Moral Sciences.”

As the scenery that lay where the wall once was scrolled by, an observant member of the audience, watching intently, may have noticed the eyes begin to focus on a distant object in the horizon. As the scenery scrolled by, the focus of the eyes remained in place, long after the object that was originally of its focus disappeared from the scene which it observed.

The Madman rambled on.

“The eyes you see in this projector are actually not eyes at all. In fact, they were built, atom by atom, not necessarily to be the exact reflection of the eyes of one who sees, but more so to be their exact inverse. These eyes were built inside out. And this brain, also engineered specifically for this purpose, is designed to record.

Pulling from his pocket a second set of eyes, The Madman explained: “These are not the inverse of eyes. These, are eyes. And they are what I used, as cameras, to record this scene before you. I linked them to this brain, I recorded this reality that you see before you, and then I used their inverse manifestations to show you what they saw.

“And now, I must show you what you see.”

And with that, and to the literal cries of the Judge, the Jury of Scientists, and to the Audience in Attendance, The Madman took a step, and then another step, and then upon reaching the wall that the projection was cast upon, The Madman took one step more- right through the wall:

‘Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the madness of the mind, which I knew from the start you would pass upon me. I stand now where there was once a wall. It is here, within this projection which I now reside, that our world exists. But also, it is where you are too. Here, I have walked into reality, and there, I have shifted it forever.

‘So without further ado my fine Audience, and from the mind of The Madman, I present to you the minds most Macabre, but most Perfect, Construct!”